1967 Chevy Camaro Project - The Unfair Advantage, Part 4

This Month We Tackle The Outer Sheetmetal.

The response from readerland about Project Unfair has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The only negative? Many have asked why we started with such a rusty, lost cause donor car.

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There are a couple of answers to this. Remember in the first installment that one of the primary requirements was to raise the floor 1.5-inches to lower (channel) the body. This was for more than just good looks-it also lowers the center of gravity quite a bit and aids aerodynamics at the top speed goal of 200-plus mph. It would be extremely difficult to raise the floor without changing the outer sheetmetal. Since the floor was being raised, it only made sense that the donor be a car with bad floors that needed quarters and rear tail pan. Why pay for pristine floors and outer panels in an Arizona body just to throw them away?

Additionally, the cars left to restore are getting rougher and rougher. Not many will tackle a project quite this far gone, but you will deal with one area or another on almost anything you can find these days. As Frank Serafine, owner of Prodigy Customs (the builder of the car) noted, "In the '80s and '90s, many cars with much nicer bodies got thrown away. Today, there are companies that can supply every single piece of metal to repair any area of a Camaro, or even get you a body from scratch." Plus, ike the Project XS Chevelle elsewhere in this issue, another piece of American history was saved from the crusher.

Enter Auto Metal Direct in Buford, Georgia. This company is a relative newcomer to the Chevy market and its reputation is quickly growing in the hobby so it got the nod for this project.

"When the three pallets of sheetmetal showed up, the first thing we did was open one of the quarter-panels to look at it," says Serafine. "The lines were very crisp. You could feel in your hand just by the weight that the metal must be thicker. You could push on the metal with your thumbs and feel the difference in the strength of the metal. And areas like jams were finished much nicer than anything else we had used."

In this article, we will cover the sheetmetal installation of the welded body parts-pretty much everything behind the firewall. Later, in another installment we will cover the install of the front sheetmetal, or should we say front aluminum. Yes, AMD stamps all the front sheetmetal in the same heavy gauge steel, but also stamps those bolt -on panels (including everything from the firewall forward-fenders, header, valance, hood, front and rear bumpers, and decklid-all in heavy-gauge, lightweight aluminum. Total weight loss using the aluminum panels is 135 lbs. And the lines on these panels are crisp.

Because the floor was raised, it caused some issues in hanging the outer sheetmetal. One of the most major things Prodigy Customs had to do was extend the panels that go from the floor and attach to the outer body. The lower rear quarter drops that go from the trunk to the lower edge of the quarter, as well as the lower inner tailpan all had to be extended 1.5-inches. Also, the area where the rear body panel meets the trunk floor had to be massaged a bit, but as if planned the upper bumper bracket mounting hole on the rear body panel ended up lining up with the lower bumper mounting hole on the trunk floor.

Another big issue because of the raised floor was the wheel tubs. Most cars running the standard issue 25.5- to 26-inch tall tire could get by without raising the wheel tubs even if they raised the floor 1.5-inches. In street, road race and autocross trim, the car will run 335/30R18 rear tires, which are 25.7-inches tall. Most cars running this size tire could just use an aftermarket mini tub (if they were mini tubing the car) and be just fine with stock location tubs. But because in drag trim, the F-body will be running 28-inch tall drag radials, Prodigy had to raise the tubs, also.

"Because we will be running this car so low, we wanted a wheelhouse that did not curve at the top," explained Serafine. "So we selected a tub kit from Art Morrison that allowed us to use every available square inch of area between the quarterpanel and framerail for our extra tall and extra wide 345/35/18 drag radials."

Follow along and we promise by the end of this story we will have something that resembles a '69 Camaro.

MORE PHOTOS

Because the floor was raised and the outer sheetmetal is staying in the stock location, the rear filler panel...

...and trunk-to-quarter drop offs had to be extended 1.5-inches.

The panels were marked, cut and 20-gauge material was inserted.

For maximum wheel/tire clearance, a smooth lip on the AMD quarter-panel lip was required so the factory return lip was removed and a piece of 1/4-inch rod was welded along the edge. This added a solid 1/2-inch of sidewall clearance.

Michael Serafine rolled out a piece of 1/4-inch rod to match the shape of the outer quarter lip then welded the rod right along the edge of the panel.

Michael did 1-inch stitch welds about 6 inches apart to keep heat down to prevent warpage. Then he goes back and welds in between each pair of welds, always keeping a 6-inch distance between each weld. This process allows for the welds to cool and allows Michael to keep welding continuously. Once the welds are ground, the edge is smooth and very rigid. Also worth noting, because the AMD panels are of such a nice thickness, there was little to no distortion or warping around the lips.

The inner quarter to roof structure had to be trimmed 1.5 inches for the raised tubs to be installed. There is an insert in the inner quarter brace that welds to the factory tub to tie everything together. Michael drilled this out and reinserted it after trimming.

The trunk floor...

...and rear seat pan were marked and trimmed for the deeper tubs.

Once the trimming was finished, the inner wheelhouse and quarter-panel were temporally screwed into place.

Frank Serafine started making a poster board template of the tub. Many pieces of poster board were sacrificed to get it perfect. It is a pain, but he only had to do one side.

A test fit showed the right side was just a mirror image of the left side.

The poster board template was traced...

...onto the wheel rub tub and the handy dandy plasma cutter made short work of the cutting.

Once the tub was trimmed, it was attached to the inner tub and welded into place. The quarter-panel was temporally installed again...

...and an outer wheel tub panel was made using a poster board template and sheetmetal piece was welded to the tub. This outer wheel tub panel follows as close to the quarter as possible and welds to the 1/4-inch bead on the quarter wheel lip. Building the tubs this way gives you every available centimeter of clearance while still offering a protection to the outer quarter-panel from stones and other projectiles coming off the tires.

Once the tubs are installed, the Prodigy crew epoxy primed all the inner structure and seam sealed all the joints in preparation for the outer sheetmetal. Keep in mind by this time the outer body has been screwed together, measured, wiggled and adjusted a dozen times before this final assembly. Prodigy uses #8x3/4 self-tapping screws to temporarily hold the panels in place for test and final fitting. When the body is loosely screwed together, measurements are taken in multiple places to assure everything is square and level. "We measure the tips of the quarter-panel to the ground and the wheel openings to the ground. We look at how the swinging panels like trunk and doors fit, how the glass fits, how the window moldings fit," says Frank. "And a lot of time is spent stepping back and looking at things before the welder comes out."

The rear body panel is screwed into place. It just so happens that the bumper bracket lower hole of the trunk pan lined up with the upper hole of the rear body panel. Otherwise there was no real drama in the rear body panel from the floor raising.

Michael screws and clamps the quarter-panels back in place for the final time. Everything is lining up just like it's supposed to.

He then installs the aluminum AMD decklid, ensures the gaps are consistent all around and tightens the deck lid.

Frank and Michael settled on approximately a 3/8-inch gap all around, so each side is square and pretty consistent to the quarter-panel and rear filler, and the edge of the decklid is equal to the edge of the quarter-panel. "We are looking for gaps better then original on this project so we will do a little work along the edges of the panels to make the gap more perfect then the original factory gaps," explains Frank.

The roof skin is then screwed into place...

...making sure the drip rails and all four corners line up.

To verify that the roof skin, quarters and filler panel between the rear window and decklid are all square to one another, a rear window is dropped into place and temporarily shimmed to make sure the gap around the glass is consistent. The gap is about 3/8- to 7/16-inch all around the glass, so Frank and Michael were feeling pretty good.

To take it one step further and verify fitment, a set of window moldings are assembled and taped into place to make sure they are going to fit. "You would not believe how many cars we see that the molding fitment was never checked until after paint," noted Frank. "Now is the time to test fit moldings. We will do this again with the actually moldings we will be using during the bodywork phase."

The door jam section of the quarter is screwed into place and the door gap is checked for consistency. This is another area where the goal is a better than original gap, so there will be more work to do in the bodywork phase.

After everything is screwed into place, it is welding time. The overlapping panels are all plug welded, and the roof-to-quarter seem is welded solid.

A borrowed 335/30R18 from another project was used to test fit for sidewall clearance. There was plenty of room and will be even for the larger/wider 345/30R18 drag radials.

Frank took a minute to mock up the borrowed tire and wheel to ride height. "This has a 5-inch rocker height in the rear and we will have a 4.5-inch rocker height in front. And we have all the ground clearance we could need with the raised floor," noted Frank.

The only thing worse than having your project stall due to lack of funds is having it screech to a halt because your shop just stopped working on it. Such was the situation for Tom Mazzorana's 1967 Chevy Camaro. - Camaro Performers Magazine » Read More

We take the old rusted wheel tubs out of 1973 Chevy Camaro project car and weld in some deep tubs from Detroit Speed's so that we can fit 335mm-wide tires. Only at www.chevyhiperformance.com, the official website for Chevy High Performance Magazine! » Read More